Audit of 225 HVAC Profitability Claims Finds 89 Percent Cite No Source, Including the Most Quoted Benchmark

Audit of 26 ranking pages finds net margin claims from 2 to 25 percent, gross margin 30 to 65 percent, and 89 percent of all figures with no source named.

TAMPA, FL, UNITED STATES, September 21, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — An audit of the HVAC profitability figures circulating online found that 201 of 225 quantitative claims, or 89 percent, cite no source at all.

The study, released by Sales Roadmap, ran ten search queries in September 2026 covering HVAC profit margin, gross margin, close rate, average ticket, technician turnover, callback rate, revenue per truck, and financial benchmarking. Top organic results were retrieved and cached, producing 26 pages. Four pages defeated the claim extractor and were dropped, leaving 22 parsed. Twenty of those 22 make at least one quantitative claim, and ten of the 20 carry no sourced figure at all.

Every extracted claim had to appear verbatim in the cached page text. Claims failing that check were discarded rather than kept.

The published figures contradict each other. Ten pages ranking for the same profitability query state a net profit margin for HVAC contractors, 27 such figures between them. Across those ten pages the stated net margins run from 2 percent to 25 percent. Gross margin runs from 30 percent to 65 percent across the same set, and of the 29 gross margin figures, 28 name no source. The one that does names an in-house expert rather than a study.

The benchmark that recurs by name is attributed to a 2024 financial benchmarking study from the Air Conditioning Contractors of America. The survey page published by the association was checked directly in September 2026. It offers members access to the 2021 report and invites non-members to purchase it. No 2024 study appears there.

One of the ranking pages labels its own figure as attributed to 2024 ACCA benchmarking, secondary, which states that the number was obtained second-hand rather than from the study.

Kamyar Shah, the fractional COO who ran the audit, said the disclosure applies to his own properties as well.

“One of the 26 pages retrieved is published by my own company and repeats the same 2024 attribution without verification,” Shah said. “It is counted in the figures exactly as every other page is.”

Shah said the finding is not an accusation against the association.

“The association publishes what it publishes,” Shah said. “The problem sits downstream, in the pages that cite a year that does not exist, and in every owner who then treats the result as settled.”

The audit attributes the gap to structure rather than intent. Residential HVAC has no mandatory financial disclosure, contractors are overwhelmingly private, most are small, and no government statistical program was found to publish contractor margin, close rate, average ticket, callback rate, or revenue per truck.

Shah said the practical exposure is that unsourced figures enter decisions with money attached, most often in compensation, pricing, and acquisition.

“An owner reads that top performers close at a given rate and sets a commission threshold just below it,” Shah said. “Nobody reaches the threshold, because the published figure counted different events. The plan then reads as a pay cut, and the technicians who were performing well leave first.”

The recommended alternative is internal measurement. The study advises measuring gross margin by job type rather than in aggregate, tracking the same figure monthly for two quarters before making changes, and writing a one-sentence definition for every metric that states what counts and what does not.

The cached pages and the extracted claim set are retained, so every figure in the study can be traced back to its source page.

The full study is available at https://salesroadmaps.com/hvac-profit-benchmark/

ABOUT Kamyar Shah is a Fractional COO, Fractional CMO, and Executive Coach, and the founder of World Consulting Group, with over 25 years of experience helping organizations achieve operational excellence and sustainable growth. He has led 650+ consulting engagements, producing more than $300M in measurable results. More at https://kamyarshah.com and https://www.kamyarshah.name

CONTACT Kamyar Shah World Consulting Group https://kamyarshah.com/contact/

KEYWORDS HVAC business, HVAC profit margin, industry benchmarks, contractor operations, fractional COO, HVAC benchmarking, business operations, Kamyar Shah

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